


the truth doesn't lie

by feriswheel



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: ACOWAR Tumblr Exchange, Alternate Universe - Historical, Az and Cass still have wings, F/M, France (Country), French is used, Interrogation, Secret Organizations, Spain, Spanish Inquisition, Truthsayer!Morrigan, but they think they are, they're not really secret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 15:50:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10722408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feriswheel/pseuds/feriswheel
Summary: Morrigan saw the truth in everything that people said. AU.Written for the 2017 ACOWAR Tumblr Exchange for callmeladytypewriter on tumblr.





	the truth doesn't lie

_1478_

The faint candlelight in the room threw shadows across the face of the person she was interrogating. He was a middle-aged man with dark hair that was sprinkled with a smattering of grey. The fear in his eyes seemed outweighed by the fact that it was a woman that would be interrogating him. The room that they were in was one that she used often for matters like this. Dark, gloomy, and all around miserable to be in, it was obvious that it was designed to make the occupants lose hope quickly and give up whatever it was that the Order wanted.

Sighing to herself internally, Morrigan began the process of weeding out information that the Order wanted. Information about the newly formed _Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición_. Scrunching her nose up at the thought of the predictable outcome of the office, Morrigan fiddled with the small dagger on the table in between her and the man. His eyes followed the spinning of the blade nervously and sweat began to bead on his forehead.

The truthsayer began with a simple question. “What’s your name?”

The man began to sweat even more profusely and Morrigan hadn’t even asked anything too difficult. She had to refrain from rolling her eyes. “M-my name is Martín Fernández Çerón.” His eyes fluttered around in their sockets and focused on a spot to the left of her head.

She wrote the answer down. “Do you have any living family?”

Çerón’s eyes darted around even more furiously as if by looking everywhere at least ten times, an escape route would make itself known. “N-no,”

_He has a wife and two children along with a dog. His dead sister has an illegitimate child from being raped living in the streets of Spain somewhere. There’s a third cousin living in France with a wife and four children. His mother had an affair with a soldier ten years ago and bore a boy . . ._

The information that she was given flowed through her mind, and she monotonously wrote the truth down. Glancing up, she tapped the quill to her mouth. “You’re lying.”

The man sputtered and began to deny it. “N-no, I’m not! I really don’t have any family! P-please believe me!”

The same information began making itself known to Morrigan in her mind. _He has a wife and two children along with a dog. His dead sister has . . ._ Knowing that the man would probably lie to everything else as well, she simply continued on with the interrogation and wrote down the information that she was made privy to because of his lies. It wouldn’t have made any difference whether or not he lied because either way, Morrigan would know the truth.

Taking care to write down every detail down that poured out, the fair-haired woman finally stood. There was relief in Çerón’s expression, but it quickly faded as he realised what would be his fate when he heard the shuffling.

Morrigan heard the man’s screams as she left for dinner, having left him with the _dogs_ when she had finished.

 _Years drifted past, decades flew away until finally, a century had passed. The lives of the_ normal _humans went on as usual and with time, they all died in some way or another. But the lifespans of the humans that were experimented on with_ unholygodlynotofthisworld _powers continued on, forever preserved at the age they were_ reborn _as_ . 

 

* * *

 

 

_1578_

The burlap sack on Morrigan’s head was roughly taken off, making her golden locks stick up everywhere. Roughly pushed into a room, she stumbled and hit the wall. The guard made sure that she was completely in the room before closing the door, locking it with a thunk that echoed across the room, signaling the use of the deadbolt. After being chased through the streets the way that she had, Morrigan wasn’t going anywhere. She was exhausted, and her captors had taken advantage of that.

Letting out a giant breath, she got off the wall, made her way to the sparse bed and collapsed upon it, passing out almost immediately. Her last thoughts before she fell asleep were that if they wanted to kill her, they could wake her up to do it. Morrigan sure as hell wasn’t going to wait for her death.

When she woke the next day, it was to the sound of her door being banged on.

“Get up. The _Commandant_ requires your presence,” a rough, accented voice said through the door. Apparently they were making an effort to communicate to her, seeing as the guard had spoken in heavily accented Spanish.

Being back in France gave Morrigan mixed feelings. It had been a full hundred years since she had been taken from her home country. Back when the old _Principal_ had been alive, the truthsayer was never allowed to leave the country, even with an escort. But the new _Principal_ , the one that had overthrown the former one, wanted her here being useful.

He had wanted Morrigan to build him a base in France, to build him a future empire that spanned across all of the continent where he would be king and she would be his _queen_. He seemed to be under the delusion that she held too much fear for him to rifle through his mind, but Morrigan had done just that and had gleaned why he was sending her out.

She was to be his _trophy_ , a thing on his arm to be bragged about, a docile and obedient lady with no will of her own. Snorting to herself, she thought that he had none of the power and fear that the real _Principal_ had wielded. And even so, he seemed to think that she would just kneel over and submit, forgetting the fact that before everything else, she was a _warrior_ . But this was her chance to get away from that oppressively blood-filled land, the land where she was a tool, a weapon, something to be used. _Something to be discarded_. . .

And in her reckless thoughts of freedom, Morrigan had gotten herself captured. By a group that seemed to be aware of her peculiar existence, given the extent that they had anticipated her moves _. Oh mon dieu._

Sliding out of the small bed they had provided her with, the temptress walked to the door. She tried the handle and surprisingly, it opened. The sight of a tall, intimidating man greeted her. It wasn’t the guard from last night; this one had a barrier around his mind that prevented her from reading his desires. It was an odd thing, swirling around and covering his mind. Curious, Morrigan tilted her head at him, but she didn’t dare touch the swirling barrier.  The man simply looked at her and began walking down the hallway, expecting her to follow.

The structure that she was currently walking through evidently belonged to someone with money. The wood floors appeared to be polished frequently, the walls had paintings hanging from them, and the atmosphere that the place oozed simply screamed _filthy rich_.

Just her luck that she would be captured by a rich organization, judging from the building and the fact that the guard had said that the _Commandant_ had wanted to see her. Of course they wanted to see the freak of nature, of course they wanted to use its powers. Of course they wanted control.

What could be better than someone who could make people tell their deepest secrets?

 

* * *

 

 

_1601_

The wind was strong that night, bringing dark clouds of rain to the city. The first fat drop hit Morrigan’s nose and trickled down her face. Moving to a small area where there was no rain, she wiped the drop off and tosse her hair. The golden-haired woman mourned the loss of visibility as the rain began to come down hard.

Her partner for this mission was out scouting the area before she was to go in the manor. Their objective was to steal the family jewels of the Béringer family, and Morrigan couldn’t help but let out a sigh as she thought about her life now. Ever since the _Commandant_ had kidnapped her, she had been working for his organization and kept on a tight leash, unable to escape. This was her first mission outside, and she knew that it was a test of her abilities. Was this what she was reduced to? A jewel thief? She almost would rather still be under the thumb of the Spanish.

The sound of footsteps came from Morrigan’s right and she turned, on guard. She relaxed when it was just her partner. “All clear?” she whispered. He nodded, and motioned her to go ahead.

Nicolas de Dormans was a rather vocal person that hated being proved wrong. Quick to anger and slow to calm down, he was a force to be reckoned with. Morrigan thought he was a bit arrogant and didn’t know how to properly be friends with someone.

However, the truthsayer never expected him to suddenly punch her in the temple as she was about to open the window. Having only enough time to turn her head to him, she saw Nicolas give her a look of vicious satisfaction before she crumpled to the ground.

 

_acowar_

 

When Morrigan woke up again, it was to a blinding white light and murmuring voices. The white light turned out to be the sun shining through the tiny window, and the voices belonged to the guards standing on the other side of the bars.

Morrigan furrowed her brows and look at her surroundings. It was one of the prison cells that the _Commandant_ used for prisoners, so why on earth was she in one? Not to mention the fact that her hands were bound and shackled to the wall. Having a brief moment of panic, she frantically tried to remember what had happened during the mission. It had started raining, Nicolas had come back to tell her that it was safe to go inside, and then . . . Morrigan groaned as she remembered that Nicolas had knocked her out. He must have had some ulterior motives that she didn’t know about, but why would that have led her to being locked up?

Lifting her head up, she decided to ask the guards. “Hey, what happened?”

The two men turned to look at her. “Well, look who’s awake,” the guard on the left said with a smug smile.

“The little traitor has awaked,” continued the guard on the right. Morrigan was confused. No, confused was not a good word to describe the anger that were coming to life in her chest. Traitor? If anyone was a traitor, it was Nicolas for knocking her out and ruining her test mission. He must have done something to frame her, because she sure as hell hadn’t done anything wrong recently.

Morrigan glared at the guards, but then changed her expression into something sultry. It shouldn’t take too much to prod them into answering her questions. “You wouldn’t mind telling me what happened now, could you?” she purred. “I can’t seem to remember what happened.”

The guards exchanged a glance between them and the one on the left chuckled maliciously. “Since we’re so nice, we’ll tell you. Your partner caught you trying to make off with the jewels, but thankfully, he was able to capture you for a trial.”

Morrigan paled. The faux trials that the _Commandant_ set up were merely games designed to humiliate the offender in the worst ways. They were punishments for doing things wrong, and they never let a person off easily. Most of them ended in the guilty being killed in the end, but not before days of sadistic punishment and humiliation.

She couldn’t believe that Nicolas managed to wrangle one for her. Come to think of it, why did he even want one for her? Maybe he was working for someone else who wanted her for themselves. Morrigan snorted at that thought.

When she had first been paraded by the _Commandant,_ there were many nobles that had wanted her for her beauty and powers. Curvaceous, fairhaired, and _powerful._ She was be forced to entertain them by the _Commandant,_ and she loathed nothing more than being made to submit to those simpering fools.

The guard on the left laughed suddenly, and Morrigan turned to look at him, pulled out of her thoughts. “I can’t wait to see what punishment they’ll come up for you, _salope_.”

Morrigan saw red. “Even if I am a _salope,_ I would never let you touch me with your two inch dick, you _fils de pute,_ ” she snarled, pulling against her restraints. The guard’s face turned an ugly shade of puce, and he grabbed the bars harshly.

“ _Va te faire foutre_ , I can get any _salope_ I want,” he growled, spit flying out of his mouth.

_His wife hasn’t slept with him for five years, the whores won’t even look at him, and the prostitutes rush in order to leave and get paid._

Morrigan grinned harshly, the pale morning light flashing off of her teeth.

“Oh, are you really so sure about that?”

She leaned forward and saw the hint of primal fear flash through the guard’s eyes. There was just something about people like her that put others on edge, almost as if they could sense the unnatural powers shoved in their bodies all those years ago.

This guard was no exception to her powers. “Who is the man whose own wife hasn’t slept with him in five years? Who is the man who the whores won’t even touch? Who is the man that the prostitutes rush with?”

Tilting her head, Morrigan gave the guard an assessing look that she had perfected with the interrogations more than two decades ago. It was a look that was designed to strip the target to its bones, to make them feel like a deer being hunted by a pack of wolves.

At this point, the man was red with embarrassment, and the laughter of his fellow guard certainly wasn’t helping his destroyed reputation.

“Oh man, she _destroyed_ you, I guess you forgot that she can sense lies.” he guffawed.

The humiliated guard turned to Morrigan. “I hope that they give you what you deserve, you unnatural _connasse,_ ” he spat.

The breathtakingly beautiful woman, in turn, simply cocked her head. “You know that I’m too useful for them to get rid of me completely.”

 

* * *

 

The barbed whip cracked and tore into her back, slicing open the skin and making rivulets of blood stream. Jeers could heard from the crowd that was watching, hungry eyes shining with bloodlust.

Morrigan kept her head high, despite the fact that she was naked and sentenced to 100 lashe, followed by being displayed in the hall for an undetermined amount of time. She could bear this torture, compared to what training she had endured, this should have been child’s play.  

_Crack_

_Crack_

_Crack_

_Crack_

The lashes kept on coming, and she was sure that the feeling of flesh dangling wasn’t just her imagination. They had mangled her back to a bloody mess. The pain screamed in her mind, making her tear up and cry, but she refused to scream and give the _Commandant_ satisfaction. At the thought of him, she lifted her eyes and sent a hateful glare to him, which he didn’t see because he was too busy staring at the ample bosom of a prostitute.

This was what she was - entertainment. Morrigan bit back a yelp as the whip hit an extremely torn up portion of her back. Sharp pain lanced through her again, almost a reprieve from the _burning_ kind of pain everywhere else.

Red stained the floor that she was kneeling on, pouring down her back and making a small pool of crimson. In the background, Morrigan was vaguely aware of the catcalls and taunting from the watchers, the sounds echoing in her ears but never fully registering. Her mind was preoccupied with the _searingburningterrible_ pain that came with each crack of the whip.

_Crack_

_Crack_

_Crack_

_Crack_

Hazily, Morrigan was able to tell that they had switched whips a while ago. The feeling of multiple jagged pieces of metal raking across her back simultaneously had to come from a cat o’ nine tails. Either that, or there were multiple people mutilating her back.

The dazed woman wondered what number they were on; she had lost count at about sixty-three when the whip had snapped around to her front and tore a deep gash on her right breast.

Bracing herself for the next _crack_ every time, she had bitten her lips to a gory chaos. The metalic taste of blood had been in her mouth for minutes. Or was it hours? Possibly days. She didn’t know at this point. All she knew was _painpainpain._

The dead _Principal_ would have been so disappointed in her. Deliriously, Morrigan thought about what a sight she must have made - naked, hands bound in front of her, blood smeared all over her lips, red trickling down her neck, back a ravaged wasteland of flesh and bone. Maybe the blood loss was getting to her, because the thought of that made her giggle inside a bit.

At some point, the background chattering in the crowd had died off in her head, but it was coming back now with a vengeance.

_“Look at her, she can’t even keep her head up-”_

_“It’s a shame that her sien was caught in the process, it was nice to look at-”_

_“Oh, cher, look at her back-”_

_“Mon dieu, there’s blood everywhere-”_

_“That salope got what she deserved-”_

The insultes and gasps of horror were only faintly acknowledged by the truthsayer. Morrigan’s brain was trying to comprehend the fact that the pain seemed to be getting worse and worse-

And that the lashes had stopped.

Morrigan wanted to cry in relief at the thought of it _finally_ being over, but each breath that she took sent flares of fire up her back and it seemed to be feeding the forest fire that was taking place on her back as of then.

Someone roughly grabbed the rope binding her hands together and began to physically drag her out of the ‘courtroom’ on her stomach. She couldn’t help but whimper at the movement sending more streaks of fire through her back.

The whisperings got louder and louder until every hiss pounded in her ears and made her head spin. Reaching the doors, the position that Morrigan was in allowed her to slide her eyes behind her to the _Commandant._

He was watching her with a pleased look on his ugly face, and as the guard opened the grand doors out, he gave her a smile and raised his goblet.

“Let us hope that our little pet learns something from this, _oui_?

 

_acowar_

 

The guards that were tying Morrigan’s hands to a rope that hung from the ceiling were rough. They jostled her on purpose and Morrigan could hardly think beyond the _painpainpain_.

One of them spat at her feet, which were barely touching the ground. “You got what you deserved, did you, you little _connasse_.”

Through her pain-glazed eyes, she recognized the guard from that morning. It was the one who she had embarrassed in front of the other guard. Mustering up a small smile despite her ruined lips, she managed to let out a chuckle. That small action made tears build up in Morrigan’s eyes again, but she ignored him for her petty revenge.

“Make sure to tell all your little friends about your wife and those whores who won’t even touch you.”

The man’s face turned that ugly shade of puce again, and in a flash, Morrigan was spinning on the rope. He had slapped her.

More blood was smeared on her face from her lips, the sticky substance feeling oddly out of place. It _should_ be all on her back, she thought with a real giggle this time.

The guard had stormed off, and the others had left as well, their job done. Her giggle echoed in the opulent hall with no one to hear it.

Morrigan had finally passed out from the pain. When she opened her eyes again, the hall was dark and the moon filtered in through the glass windows.

The caustic gazes of this insipid organization had already left. Thankfully, Morrigan had been unconscious through it.

Methodically analyzing her wounds through the amount of pain she felt from them, the truthsayer concluded that the scars would fade in about a year, but she would have pain up to about three months from now. Considering how deep some of the lashes were, had she been human, she would have never regained the use of her back muscles. And she probably would have already died from blood loss. _Oh, the perks of being ‘semi-immortal’._

The forest fire that she had felt earlier today had gone down a tad, but only by a tad. It still felt like there was a vicious flame eating up Morrigan’s back. She couldn’t wait until the _Commandant_ had deemed her punishment done so that she could go tend to her wounds _and get revenge on Nicolas de Dormans_.

The darkness claimed her again, and Morrigan fell unconscious again.

 

_acowar_

 

The next time she woke up, it was to the feeling of her ropes being cut off. Morrigan was lightly set to the ground, but the amount of blood that she had lost in the past day didn’t allow her to be stable on her own two feet, so she toppled against the person. Her arms fell uselessly to her sides and the blood circulation returned.

“Whoa there, steady now.”

The person, who she now knew to be a male, judging from his voice, had caught her gently. He had a nice voice. The sound caressed her softly; it was smooth and silky. Certainly this was a dream. No guard would be so nice to her, and come to think of it, it was still dark outside.

Morrigan was able to vaguely make out the shape of the mystery-saviour. Using the moonlight to her advantage,  she was blearily able to discern hazel eyes and tanned skin with dark hair threaded with shadows. Shadows? Maybe she was dreaming, but at least her mind had the courtesy to imagine an attractive guy to save her.

Morrigan squinted her eyes and shook her head, but when she looked again, there were still shadows moving through the mysterious man’s hair. On second thought, maybe she shouldn’t have shaken her head, because her back’s personal forest fire flared up again. She let out a clenched hiss.

The man looked at her worriedly, and made a gesture off to the side. Morrigan’s eyes lazily followed the movement. A second later, they widened because there were writhing streams of darkness entwining his hands.

With wide eyes, Morrigan turned her head back to the almost-indiscernible face of the man. Her voice dry from a lack of water all day, she hoarsely whispered, “Who are you?”

At least she still had enough sense to ask the important questions, even if this was a dream.

The man carefully kept Morrigan from falling again as she was slowly being wrapped in a deliciously soft blanket. “I’m here to rescue you,” he whispered back, concern in his eyes.

Morrigan squinted at him again, bewildered. “You’re pretty,” she mumbled through her pain-riddled world, the words that the man had spoken not piercing through the haze. The man, however, startled and almost let her go of her. He offered up a small smile that let Morrigan know that he wasn’t used to smiling. Even though she was almost catatonic from all the blood that she had lost, she still could read people in this may-or-may-not-be dream.

The battered woman was carefully turned and guided to a stretcher. She gratefully collapsed on the cloth with her back up. Feeling slightly bad for staining the blanket covering her, she whispered an apology.

“Sorry for staining your blanket.”

The mysterious man, who was still holding on to her gently, let out a curse at the sight of her back. “ _Merde,_ she’s still bleeding, Cass, we’ll have to wrap her up tighter.”

Morrigan had just realised that there was another person with the handsome man who was steadying her, but she lacked the energy to turn to look at this Cass person.

All she heard was, “Az, we don’t have time to wrap her up tighter; we’ll just have to fly back quickly.”

That voice wasn’t as nice as the mystery man but it was still really nice. She now knew that his name was Az.

Maybe her subconscious mind wanted to give her a break after what she just went through and decided to grace her dreams with mysteriously attractive guys that were going to save her. But that was cruel of herself, wasn’t it? To giver herself false hope that she was going to be saved. Morrigan giggled to herself once again; perhaps she was secretly a masochist.

Suddenly, Morrigan’s world went up; the stretcher was being carried by Cass and Az.

Az’s face was abruptly next to her’s. “Hold on tight, we’re going to be flying.”

She could see the individual flecks of colour in his eyes. There were streaks of green, dots of blue, a smattering of grey, and a swirl of brown, and Morrigan couldn’t tear her eyes away from the beauty in front of her. His dark eyelashes cast long shadows over his cheekbones in the moonlight. Morrigan couldn’t help but think that he looked rather like a dark angel come to finally take her from this world.

At the foot end of the stretcher, Morrigan felt Cass shifting the stretcher in his hands. “Az, we need to get going. Who knows when someone is going to come,” he murmured worriedly. Az nodded at him.

The creeping feeling of being pulled back to the world of dreams descended upon her quickly.

“Are you a dark angel that’s going to save me?” she slurred.

Az gave Morrigan another tight smile. She swore that she saw giant wings emerging from the shadows on his back, magnificent and ethereal, beating slowly.

The truthsayer slowly drifted off to sleep to the feeling of flying, but she heard a soft voice answer her right before she truly fell into slumber.

“No, I’m just here to save you.”


End file.
